Horizontal Section Viewport lines thickness

[Andreas]

Dear VW Team

It seems something goes wrong when using an Horizontal Section Viewport (HSV).
It seems the lines (of an object) in the HSV are rendered before the fill, then the thickness looks the half of the same in 2D Plan View.

Here an Image to show this issues.


I'm using VW2023 SP6.

Regards

 

[line-weight]

@Andreas can you share a copy of the Vectorworks file that you used to create the image above?

 

I can't replicate this, but there are quite a lot of different combinations of settings that contribute to the appearance of an HSV.

[Andreas]

Thanks @line-weight

Here the file ViewPort lines issues.vwx

[line-weight]

Ok, I can see what you mean, however you are using a Design Layer Viewport for the horizontal section.

 

I hardly ever use design layer viewports so am not entirely familiar with them.

 

But I can get the HSV in your file to show the correct line thickness by changing the "left pen" and "right pen" attributes to be "by class" in the settings for the wall components, for the wall objects in your drawing, as below.

 

 

 

Beyond this though... I think you are basically right, somehow it is drawing the wall with a line taken from the attributes of the wall object's class, then it is drawing on top of that a rectangle using the wall component's attributes, and in your file the component has zero line thickness.

 

Is this intended behaviour? I'm not sure. This seems like something for @Matt Panzer.

[line-weight]

I have just tried seeing what happens if I create a HSV in a sheet layer instead of on the design layer.

 

 

In this case the behaviour seems to be different. The walls aren't drawn using the attributes of the wall object at all - they are drawn only using the attributes of the wall components. So in your file this results in filled rectangles with no line at all. To make lines appear I need to choose what I want in the settings for the wall component. All this is assuming we are using these settings for the HSV:

 

 

I use HSVs a lot, and often with these settings, that is with individual components shown, rather than merged. And for things like walls, I always control the appearance via the component attributes, and the attributes of the wall object itself never come into play.

 

In fact if (sheet layer) HSVs displayed in the same way as your design layer one does, it might cause me issues, or at least I'd have to be careful about what the attributes of wall objects themselves are, rather than just their components.

[Matt Panzer]

10 hours ago, line-weight said:

Ok, I can see what you mean, however you are using a Design Layer Viewport for the horizontal section.

 

I hardly ever use design layer viewports so am not entirely familiar with them.

 

But I can get the HSV in your file to show the correct line thickness by changing the "left pen" and "right pen" attributes to be "by class" in the settings for the wall components, for the wall objects in your drawing, as below.

 

 

 

Beyond this though... I think you are basically right, somehow it is drawing the wall with a line taken from the attributes of the wall object's class, then it is drawing on top of that a rectangle using the wall component's attributes, and in your file the component has zero line thickness.

 

Is this intended behaviour? I'm not sure. This seems like something for @Matt Panzer.

 

I believe this behavior is at least partially related to how the wall draws its Top/Plan graphics.  The wall lines that are getting partially masked by the component fills only display when using the "Display extents below cut plane" option in the viewport.  Since those lines are seen as being below the cut plane, the cut graphics display on top of them.  I also see the left and right wall lines showing correctly (in the cut graphics) when the component line thicknesses are not directly set to zero or are "by class".  I'm not sure why there's a difference there.  As for the wall caps not showing in the cut graphics, this is a known issue and is due to some technical challenges.  Moving forward, we do want to get the graphics of horizontal (and vertical) sections as close as possible to the quality of Top/Plan.

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, Matt Panzer said:

I believe this behavior is at least partially related to how the wall draws its Top/Plan graphics. The wall lines that are getting partially masked by the component fills only display when using the "Display extents below cut plane" option in the viewport.  Since those lines are seen as being below the cut plane, the cut graphics display on top of them.

 

Ah. I see.

 

But for some reason the same doesn't happen in a sheet layer HSV (even with "display extents below cut plane" active).

Edited October 12, 2023 by line-weight

[Matt Panzer]

2 hours ago, line-weight said:

 

Ah. I see.

 

But for some reason the same doesn't happen in a sheet layer HSV (even with "display extents below cut plane" active).

Right.  I’m not sure if there’s a reason for the difference.

[Tom W.]

8 hours ago, Matt Panzer said:

Moving forward, we do want to get the graphics of horizontal (and vertical) sections as close as possible to the quality of Top/Plan.

 

Would this include, do you think, the addition of a 'Hatch Line Scale' setting for section VPs? And to be able to turn off Wall component classes to just leave the container class visible?

[line-weight]

4 hours ago, Tom W. said:

 

And to be able to turn off Wall component classes to just leave the container class visible?

Is that something that's possible in a top/plan viewport?

[Tom W.]

1 minute ago, line-weight said:

Is that something that's possible in a top/plan viewport?

 

Yes absolutely. Setting Detail level to Low does the same thing but makes everything else show at same detail level as well

[Andreas]

12 hours ago, Matt Panzer said:

I believe this behavior is at least partially related to how the wall draws its Top/Plan graphics.  The wall lines that are getting partially masked by the component fills only display when using the "Display extents below cut plane" option in the viewport.  Since those lines are seen as being below the cut plane, the cut graphics display on top of them.  I also see the left and right wall lines showing correctly (in the cut graphics) when the component line thicknesses are not directly set to zero or are "by class".  I'm not sure why there's a difference there.  As for the wall caps not showing in the cut graphics, this is a known issue and is due to some technical challenges.  Moving forward, we do want to get the graphics of horizontal (and vertical) sections as close as possible to the quality of Top/Plan.

 

 

23 hours ago, line-weight said:

Dears @MatPanzer and @Line-weight
Thanks for yours answers.

The solution to this issue is check "Add profile line" and the HSV show correctly the boundaries lines of the wall . 
"Display extents below cut plane" is why a HSV is needed , cause a classic Viewport don't show correctly the projected object (and also the cut objects aren't properly displayed sometimes).

In any case thanks you very much, I really appreciate yours help.

And for the Wishlist, please update the classic Viewport in order to avoid the use of the HSV , if possible, of course.

Sincerely
 

[line-weight]

55 minutes ago, Andreas said:

The solution to this issue is check "Add profile line" and the HSV show correctly the boundaries lines of the wall . 

 

You might find that this has its own problems, though.

 

Because where VW decides to draw the profile line might not match what you want. See this thread:

 

 

Specifically, for example here's a vertical section, and the red line on the left shows where VW draws the "profile line". On the right is where I think the "profile line" should be.

 

This is in VW2023 SP7.

 

 

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, Tom W. said:

 

Yes absolutely. Setting Detail level to Low does the same thing but makes everything else show at same detail level as well

How's it done in top/plan?

[Tom W.]

8 minutes ago, line-weight said:

How's it done in top/plan?

 

Not sure what you mean. You turn off the component classes in the VP settings or set the detail level to Low in the OIP e.g.:

[line-weight]

24 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

Not sure what you mean. You turn off the component classes in the VP settings or set the detail level to Low in the OIP e.g.:

 

I'm just trying to understand what it is that you can currently do in a top/plan viewport that you can't in a horizontal section. Is it not the case that the above options are also available in a HSV?

[Tom W.]

6 minutes ago, line-weight said:

 

I'm just trying to understand what it is that you can currently do in a top/plan viewport that you can't in a horizontal section. Is it not the case that the above options are also available in a HSV?

 

I never use HSVPs but in a vertical section VP which I assume behaves the same, when you turn off a Wall's component classes you are left with nothing at all:

[line-weight]

5 hours ago, Tom W. said:

 

I never use HSVPs but in a vertical section VP which I assume behaves the same, when you turn off a Wall's component classes you are left with nothing at all:

 

Have just checked with an HSVP and you are right, the behaviour is as above.

You can get the container object lines only, if you over-ride the component classes with "none" attributes for pen & fill, and don't display objects below cut plane.

If you display objects below cut plane, you get lines between the components, I think for similar reasons as discussed a few posts up.

It seems you can work around this by over-riding all component classes with "none" pen but solid white fill.

Not exactly a convenient method though.

[Matt Panzer]

12 hours ago, Tom W. said:

 

Would this include, do you think, the addition of a 'Hatch Line Scale' setting for section VPs? And to be able to turn off Wall component classes to just leave the container class visible?

 

Hatch Line scaling might be possible but showing the wall container is another thing and will have limitations in horizontal sections.  However, I think there may be other ways to better handle this moving forward.  In any case, I believe it's possible to get something similar but there may be a different way we go about it.

[Matt Panzer]

7 hours ago, Andreas said:

And for the Wishlist, please update the classic Viewport in order to avoid the use of the HSV , if possible, of course.

 

Top/Plan has a lot of limitations when trying to describe a floor plan that represents a cut through the model.  No matter what we do to try to solve these issues in Top/Plan, it will be impossible to get everything needed without truly sectioning the model.  The ideal would be, instead, to improve horizontal sections to produce Top/Plan quality graphics while sectioning the model and allow users to work on the model through them with performance and ease close to that of Top/Plan.  This may be a tall order but it would save a lot of issues with current features and make it easier to add new features for objects that would otherwise be very difficult display correctly in Top/Plan view.